Oh hell yes.
The collaboration we didn’t know we needed.
But we did. We really did.
Two artists who have long existed on the fringes, Melvins and Napalm Death need no introduction. Passionate, dedicated to their art, and entirely free from the commercial considerations that burden so many, their respective histories speak to a lifetime of steadfastly ignoring trends, scenes, and even genres, occasionally to the bafflement of their own fanbase.
As such, a collaboration between the two seems not so much inevitable as mandatory – especially given their touring history – and here, at last, is the fruits of their labours – Savage Imperial Death March. A genuinely collaborative effort, where many would have opted for a split release, Melvins and Napalm Death have thrown their collective weight behind 8 tracks of multifaceted noise and the results are every bit as wildly unpredictable and utterly brilliant as you might have hoped.
The package
Before we get to the music, it’s worth spending a little time with the stunning packaging that Mackie Osbourne worked up for this release. Mackie’s work has long adorned Melvins’ output but here she has excelled herself, curating a 12-page, 10” insert for the stunning vinyl edition that looks more like a graphic novel than your standard booklet. Wonderfully imaginative and beautifully rendered, it’s a pleasure to sit and flick through as the music churns its way into your eardrums.
Otherwise, the vinyl (available in a range of limited colours – ours is “absurd aqua”) comes housed in a standard cover, with a plain black paper sleeve to keep it safe. It’s a great pressing and, with the included booklet, an absolute gift for collectors.
The album
The album starts off as it means to go on, with the angular math-metal of Tossing Coins Into The Fountain Of Fuck. Harder edged than your standard Melvins fare, but with a darker groove than typical Napalm Death, it really is the perfect meeting of minds – an anarchic mix of virulent post-hardcore and unhinged sludge metal. A mere three-and-a-half minutes in length, it demonstrates more creative verve than most bands manage in a lifetime, and it makes for one hell of a start. It’s followed by a nine-minute epic titled Some Kind Of Antichrist, initially extremely catchy, it kicks off with a riff that has at least some of Night Goat’s DNA lodged within it (probably best not to ask exactly where, or how it got there). With Buzz taking the vocal lead and guitars that frequently sound like dentists’ drills, it’s a dense and slightly unsettling piece that slowly devolves into an unholy electronic soundscape that recalls the introduction to Napalm’s own Apex Predator (Easy meat).
Following the lengthy outro of its predecessor, Awful Handwriting is a two-minute endurance test that slowly devolves in front of the listener. With both bands conjuring up a welter of jittery noise, cut-up vocals float through the mix, further serving to confuse and disorient the listener. Fortunately, the heavy sludge of Nine Days Of Rain is waiting to see the side out, and this it does with a touch of malevolent class.
Side two opens with Rip The God. Initially something of an exercise in brutal doom minimalism, it slowly expands to include nimble guitar lines, moments of explosive violence, a deftly layered vocal from Buzz, and a mid-song switch that finds Barney come marching into the studio with a murderous glint in his eye. Easily the highlight of this none-more-brutal album, it stands as one of the best things that either Melvins or Napalm Death have done – no mean feat considering both bands’ recent output – and it leaves you feeling as if you’ve done ten rounds with a hammer-wielding maniac.
Given the oppressive nature of its predecessor, the frenetic riffing of Stealing Horses is surely welcome, both bands once again dabbling in madcap math rock, the riffs piling up until they break under their own weight, pouring forth into a wordless chorus that feels more like an existential shriek of horror. Yet, for all that, it’s surprisingly catchy, building towards a blistering finale that bleeds into the eerie electronica of Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy. Opening on a wall of ambient noise, it is a dark slab of post-industrial that would not sound out of place on the Silent Hill soundtrack.
The album wraps up with Death Hour, one last blast of ravaged noise from two bands that have established themselves as the masters of exactly that. With ramshackle solos, blended vocals, Dale Crover’s syncopated rhythms and, errr, Van Halen, it perfectly wraps up this feral record, leaving the listener thankful that both bands got it together to do this and hopeful that they might see their way to doing it again.
All too often, heavily touted collaborations are little more than exercises in backslapping dreamt up by an A&R guru looking to name drop a few additional artists on the press release.
Not this.
This is a genuine collaborative effort that finds the various members of both bands exploring their abilities and finding the points at which their influences meet. With elements of electronica, hardcore, sludge, psychedelia, ambient, and noise rock all floating to the mix, while it’s surely fun to try to spot who did what, it’s largely the case that the tracks feel completely natural for all parties involved – which is the way it should be.
As a Melvins / Napalm fanboy, this release had me screaming “fuck yes” and running in little circles (sorry for the image that potentially conjures). As a reviewer pretending to be objective, however, this release has me screaming “fuck yes” and running in little circles. Fuck it, you already know this has got to be awesome – now go buy a copy. 10/10
